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Niels Bohr

The Bomb

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Bohr returned to Denmark and resumed his role at the Copenhagen Institute.
The homecoming brought tears to many eyes, and a large celebration
was planned to celebrate his sixtieth birthday. Interest in atomic
energy was inevitable and soon occupied many minds at the Institute.

Following his failure to induce political action, Bohr
urged the scientific community to take the first steps toward cooperation.
He hoped that prewar bonds could be reestablished and strengthened, so
that physics itself could lay the foundation for international cooperation.
In 1951 Bohr called a meeting of Institute alumni. Representatives
of fourteen European countries met in Copenhagen to plan the Conseil
Européenne Recherche Nucléaire (CERN), of which Bohr became chairman.
The program called for a research facility that would cost about
$28 million, and the Geneva establishment would undoubtedly become
the most advanced European institute devoted to research free of
commercial and military influence.

1955 saw the meeting of the Atoms for Peace Conference,
where 1,200 delegates from seventy-two nations convened in Geneva. Two
years later an Atoms for Peace award was sponsored by the Ford
Motor Company Fund, and the committee unanimously chose Bohr as
its first recipient. No one had shown his commitment to the cause,
and no one better symbolized the struggle to harness atomic energy
for use beneficial rather than destructive to humanity.

Over the last years of his life, Bohr continued to lecture
all over the world. In June of 1962, Bohr went to attend a conference
in Germany, where he suffered a slight cerebral hemorrhage. Although
he appeared to make a rapid recovery, several months later, he
died in his home after complaining of a headache. He was seventy-seven years
old.

Beginning with the development of his atomic model, Bohr
had radically changed the course of physics. But this was just
the first of many major contributions. His correspondence principle
provided clarity of purpose for many researchers who were lost
in the chaotic world of the atom. He considered his own greatest
contribution to be the principle of complementarity, which attempted
to address paradoxes by accepting dual answers. This formulation
also led to endless debates, particularly with Einstein. Every
time Bohr was convinced that his logic was undeniable, Einstein
merely responded that he disliked the lack of finality in Bohr's
argument.

As the head of the Copenhagen Institute, Bohr also aided
in the cultivation of many young minds that would go on to add
their own lasting contributions to science. He served both as an
individual mentor and a symbolic leader for the scientific community
at large. Bohr will naturally be remembered foremost as a scientific
thinker, but to overlook his efforts to promote the good and contain
the bad in science would be to miss Bohr's core values. Moreover,
his efforts extended far beyond science, as he aided in the escape
of Danish Jews even at the risk of his own life. To celebrate Bohr
as a scientist is therefore insufficient. Rather, a complete picture
of Bohr must incorporate his scientific thinking with his humanitarian
and leadership roles, for he always maintained his pursuit of truth
with a constructive purpose.